In the words of Sir John Seeley, a 19th century British historian: 'History is past politics; and politics, present history'.

History, at its barest essential, is a compilation of facts – a record of important people, decisions, wars and events which have moulded and influenced society over time. Any historian worth his salt cannot just enumerate such facts blandly. As E.H. Carr says -“History means interpretation”. A historian looks back in time and examines past events in light of his knowledge of the present. He shifts through archaeological evidence, written and oral records and then selects material he considers relevant and weaves them into a narrative that his readers can appreciate. During this process, he cannot but be influenced by the present environment and the social milieu he is a part of. Again, in the words of Carr, “we can view the past, and achieve our understanding of the past, only through the eyes of the present…..the very words he uses – words like democracy, empire, war, revolution – have current connotations…..” (Carr 1961, p.13).

Politics is one factor that is an intrinsic part of every social environment. The influence of politics is prevalent throughout different time periods and nations. The views of the leaders of the State, the policies they formulate, the agitations they initiate, the institutions they create for governance – all shape and influence the character and course of a nation. However much a historian may try, he cannot but be a conduit through which these major influences of the past are conveyed to the present reader. It is not possible for a historian to write about past events in a vacuum; he must necessarily build the backdrop against which such events occur, as well as provide a character study of the chief players of the plot. Unless this is done, he will lose grip on the narrative flow of his tale as well as the attention of his reader.

Since political leaders and their influence dominate the making of historically relevant events, historical writing per force has to give due importance to politics in its narrative. At the most, different historians from different schools of historiography may present a particular point of view but their narrative has to have its basis in the political events of the period they are writing about.

For instance, different historians have diametrically differing views while writing on India’s history, especially the National Movement for Freedom. While the major milestones of the freedom struggle as they unfolded are common knowledge, but they have been given dramatically different interpretations depending on the political affiliations of the historians concerned.

When we look at older historical writing in India, treatises like Rajtarangani and Akbarnama, for instance, extolled the virtues and magnanimity of the emperors concerned, primarily because their writers enjoyed royal patronage and were obligated to present a positive and laudatory picture of the time. During modern times as well, we have historians with loyalties towards the British, justifying colonialism and the British rule in India.

MrityunjayaVidyalankar, a Brahman scholar in the employment of the East India Company in Calcutta in the early 19th century, wrote of history as that of gods and kings where dynasties were founded by divine grace and kingdoms retained so long as the ruler was true to dharma. His position was that of the 'praja', the ordinary subject. His 'Rajabali' was written in 1808 in Bengali for the instruction of company officials in the history of India. Utilitarians like James Mill believed in enlightened despotism to uplift backward Indian society. His 'History of British India' published in 1828 divided ancient and medieval periods of Indian history into Hindu and Muslim and modern as British. The same periodization was followed by other British historians as well.

     

The idea of centuries of despotic rule of maharajas and sultans with absolute power and an autocratic bureaucracy ruling over ignorant and stagnant masses was propagated. Historians of the Imperialistic school of historiography justified colonialism. "The outline of the present situation in India is that we have been disseminating ideas of abstract political right, and the germs of representative institutions, among a people that had for centuries been governed autocratically, and in a country where local liberties and habits of self-government had been long obliterated or had never existed"(Chirol 1910, p.viii).

Cambridge historians like Anil Seal, John Broomfield and Gordon Johnson gave new interpretations to colonial rule. According to them, political organisation was based along caste and religious lines. The national movement was an elitist movement where one group fought against another to find favour with the British. They felt the national leaders were power hungry and motivated by their own selfish interests. Like the Imperialists, they tried to justify colonial rule. There were also 'administrative historians' like V.A. Smith and Macaulay who based their writing mainly on official reports and documents and so presented a one-sided view of history. 

"Nationalist sentiments grew easily among the people because India was unified and welded into a nation during the 19th and 20th centuries. "(Bipan Chandra, 'History of Modern India', p. 202). Nationalist writing in India started as a reaction to the above grossly distorted depiction by British historians. "It is, needless to say, a primary sign of the nationalist consciousness that it will not find its own voice in histories written by foreign rulers and that it will set out to write for itself the account of its own past."(Partha Chatterjee, page 77). Only after Western education during British rule, did such historical writing start when newly educated Indians studied colonial writings and countered with their own version of events. "It was, in fact, in the course of writing the history of British rule in India that English educated Bengalis abandoned the criteria of divine intervention, religious value, and the norms of right conduct in judging the rise and fall of kingdoms."( Partha Chatterjee, page 90). Recent history of Bengal, especially after the revolt of 1857 and the atrocities committed, demonstrated that acts of immorality could also win kingdoms. "History was no longer the play of divine will or the fight of right against wrong; it had become merely the struggle for power."(Partha Chatterjee, page 96 )

Many text book authors in Bengal, like Mrityunjay earlier mentioned, considered themselves as ordinary subjects. But later educated middle class Bengali writers learnt to play the role of mediator between the elite rulers and their subjects. As Partha Chatterjee puts it, they "had acquired a consciousness in which they were already exercising the art of politics and stagecraft."(Partha Chatterjee, page 92)

Nationalist writers like J.N.Sarkar, Lala Lajpath Rai, C.F.Andrews and H.C. Roychoudhary tried to promote political integration and arouse patriotism. This kind of writing inspired national pride and became part of and strengthened the national movement. During the Swadeshi movement, patriotic journalism, prose and poetry reached a high. Patriotic songs written by Rabindra Nath Tagore and Rajani Kant Sen have become historical icons and are sung even today. These writings have also influenced historians while writing about that period.

Bipan Chandra points out that on the one hand, "British officials and writers of the time constantly advanced the thesis that Indians had never been able to rule themselves in the past, that Hindus and Muslims had always fought one another, that Indians were destined to be ruled by foreigners, that their religion and social life were degraded and uncivilised making them unfit for democracy or even self-government. Many of the nationalist leaders tried to arouse the self-confidence and self-respect of the people by countering this propaganda" ( Bipan Chandra, page 204-205) Thus they pointed to the cultural heritage of India with pride and referred to the political achievements of rulers like Ashoka, Chandragupta Vikramaditya and Akbar. Some, on the other hand, went the other extreme and by glorifying ancient India and ignoring the achievements of the medieval period, encouraged communal disharmony between Hindus and Muslims- "The struggle between Pratap and Akbar, or Shivaji and Aurangzeb had to be viewed as a political struggle in its particular historical setting. To declare Akbar or Aurangzeb a 'foreigner' and Pratap or Shivaji a 'national' hero was to project into past history the communal outlook of 20th century India. This was not only bad history; it was also a blow to national unity."(Bipan Chandra, page 265)

It is also important to note that historians made use of press publications, records of meetings of provincial and local associations, Indian National Congress conferences and nationalist newspapers as source material. One such example would be of ‘Kesari' newspaper which Tilak started to edit from 1839 and preached nationalism in its columns. Use of all this source material also caused a political slant to enter the historians' writing. 

Marxist writers like M.N.Roy in 'India in Transition'(published 1922) and R. Palme Dutt in 'India Today' (published 1940) focused more on the economic exploitation by the British and put more emphasis on social and economic organisations and their effect on historical events. Some like Jyotibhai Phule postulated that Sanskrit speaking Brahmans descended from the alien Aryans while the indigenous people were considered lower caste. He demarcated between the dominant upper caste and oppressed lower caste and used caste confrontation to justify political movements. In the 1960s, historians like Sumit Sarkar, E.P.Thompson and Partha Chatterjee wrote history from the point of view of the subjugated, the poor, workers and women. Ranajit Guha, in 'Subaltern Studies 1' states, "The historiography of Indian nationalism has for a long time been dominated by elitism-colonial elitism and bourgeois-nationalist elitism."(Guha, page 1)"What is clearly left out of this unhistorical (elitist) historiography is the politics of the people."(Guha, page 4)

Even though these historians focussed their attention on the problems of the masses, the downtrodden and on class inequalities, they could not separate this from the politics of the day as it is that which determines all other aspects of society.

Even today, the major political parties of the country use the press and social media for tom-toming their achievements and denigrating the opposition. Whether Gandhi or Sardar Patel, all past political luminaries are fair game in this race. The public records of these bombastic claims and counterclaims are going to be the source material for future historians when they research and write about this period of Indian history- "every journalist knows today that the most effective way to influence opinion is by the selection and arrangement of the appropriate facts...The facts speak only when the historian calls on them, it is he who decides to which facts to give the door, and in what order or context."( Carr 1961, p.5)

Depending on which ideology the historian favours, whether Hindutva or Communist or Dalit etc, his writing is bound to be biased. Politics is so firmly entrenched in our society that it is impossible to be totally objective. No matter which branch of history he may be a scholar of- social, economic, anthropological or cultural- no historian can avoid the overreaching dominance of politics from influencing his work.

Lastly, another important point to be considered is the financial aspect of being a historian. A historian needs financial support for carrying out his research and study. He depends on scholarship grants, stipends and royalties from published works, and unpalatable it may be, but the truth is that politics sells. The twists and turns of political battles, the rise and fall from power of political parties, the rise in favour or fall from grace of party leaders. All these are of immense interest for the common man as they affect his life in myriad ways. Such dramatic political ups and downs also dominate media headlines and television debates. All this provides plenty of grist for the historian's mill. He knows that an informed account  and in-depth analysis of all such developments will be of value for present and future students of history and politics. So, it makes sound economic sense to focus on such political matters in his historical writings.

Thus, after considering the points discussed in this paper, I think it is right to say that the writing of history is necessarily political.

BIBLIOGRAPHY-

Chirol, Valentine. 1910. Indian Unrest. London: Macmillan and co., Limited.

Carr, E.H. 1961. What is History? Cambridge University Press

Bipan Chandra. 2001. History of Modern India. ( Chapter 10 and 11)

Chaterjee, Partha. 1993. “ The Nation and Its Fragments”. USA: Princeton University Press

Guha, Ranajit.2009. The Small Voice of History. India: Permanent Black

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